Intimate Certainty by David McGregor
David McGregor
Intimate Certainty
Site #2
City Hall
Monday-Friday: 8:00am-6:00pm
Saturday-Sunday & Holidays: 10am-6pm
Each winter, wild rabbits selectively thin the forest in areas where poplar trees are young and crowded. It is one of the ways that a regenerating forest regulates itself, demonstrating the interconnectedness between species. Intimate Certainty creates an interface between human spaces and the work of rabbits.
Photo Credit: David McGregor
ARTIST STATEMENT
“The work can be thought of as a collection of residues or traces of interactions that have taken place between him and the land, other creatures, and other people. ”
David is a settler artist working and living in the rural community of Goodfare, Alberta, on Treaty 8 Territory. He maintains a deeply observational practice that is attentive to the various systems and experiences of time that he perceives as a stranger/settler. He invites seasonal time to participate in the process. The work can be thought of as a collection of residues or traces of interactions that have taken place between him and the land, other creatures, and other people. In his artmaking he often includes linework from the natural world, or the natural world’s visible responses to the activities of people. These marks can be anything from worm trails to the marks of rabbits' teeth on wood, and even the shapes created by wildfire perimeters. Each of his projects try to include the complexity of how different systems overlap and affect one another. This attention to interconnectedness is one of the ways that David's work invites viewers to engage with the complexity of how we affect, and are affected by, the natural systems that support us.
Intimate Certainty is constructed with thin poplar trees that have been chewed on by wild rabbits in the boreal forest. Each winter wild rabbits selectively thin the forest in areas where poplar trees are young and crowded. When the rabbits remove the bark around the base of a young tree it kills it for the coming season, creating more space for neighbouring trees and other plants. This is one way that a regenerating forest regulates itself and demonstrates interconnectedness between species over seasonal time.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
David McGregor is an artist and filmmaker living in Goodfare, Alberta, on Treaty 8 Territory. He holds an MFA from Emily Carr University where his research focused on participation within the natural world over multiple seasons. Through lens-based images, printmaking, sculpture, installation and text, David’s practice considers systems of decay and transformation as well as the way that the land responds to resource extraction and wildfires. His work is especially interested in how seasonal time is expressed through natural systems.